Opinion

The mysteries science is coming across are getting bigger and bigger. On both the smallest and greatest scale, science is completely stumped.

String theory, the most promising theory of physics of the past thirty years, since it was meant to explain everything, cannot be tested or proven. Basically, the theory is that underlying all particles discovered in cyclotrons like the Large Hadron Collider, there are infinitely tiny particles called "strings" whose vibrations at different rates produces all other particles. However to test string theory, according to David Goldberg, a leading astrophysicist, you would need a cyclotron the size of our solar system. It can't be done.

Goldberg was speaking at Starfest, the annual gathering of about 800 professional and amateur astronomers north of Mount Forest, which I've attended for the past four years.

Another famous astronomer said telescopes are time machines. When we observe the Andromeda galaxy, we are seeing it as it was two million years ago, because it is two million light years away and it took that long for the light we are presently seeing to reach us.

If you looked back far enough, beyond the furthest galaxies, you would eventually see nothing in every direction except the cosmic fireball produced by the Big Bang, the explosion that began everything. There is no seeing beyond this. Scientists cannot say what caused the Big Bang.

Physicists tell us that at the quantum, subatomic level the universe operates in unexplainable, irrational ways. No one knows how the same particle can be in two locations at once, how light can be both a wave and a particle at the same time, or how particles come out of a complete void.

Similarly, at the largest level, Goldberg told us astrophysicists have "no clue what the universe is expanding into, why there is more matter than antimatter, or why there is anything at all." They also have no idea what "dark matter" and "dark energy" are, even though scientists know they make up 95% of the universe. Only 5% of the universe is visible.

At a previous Starfest, an astronomer said "when scientists have no clue, they give things a name and that makes everyone feel better." For example, scientists have no idea why there was 380,000 years of complete darkness after the Big Bang, but they called the first appearance of photons "First Dawn" and that calmed everyone down.

Also, when they have no clue, they start theorizing, and if there is no way to test their pure theories they call it "cosmology." Cosmologists have theorized that the Big Bang was caused by "branes" colliding, but they have no way of testing this, and it just pushes the problem back another step. Where did the branes come from?

An aboriginal Canadian who had become a professional astronomer told us that, according to aboriginal lore, the universe is floating on the back of a giant turtle. They also believed this in ancient China, which gives added weight to the argument. It seems to me to be as valid a myth as the theory of branes.

More science equals more mystery. Still more science equals still more mystery. Projecting down the road, further science will result in even more incomprehensible mysteries, ad infinitum.

Astronomy has completely blown apart many peoples' former belief in God. They had to find a much bigger, more mysterious, more glorious God if they wanted to keep believing. So, believers are indebted to science for helping us to know God more fully.

However, since some scientists think all religion is mythology, and since their smallest and greatest theories can't be proven, it would help if they realized cosmologists are really doing mythology under the guise of scientific explanation, and if some scientists say science proves there is no God, they are really doing theology disguised as scientific authority.